Prophecy for Dummies

8/4/2019 Prophecy for Dummies

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THINGS ASTHEY ARE,WERE

ARE TO COME

Prophecy

for DummiesANTHONY E. LARSON


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THINGS AS THEY ARE,WERE AND ARE TO COME

Prophecy for DummiesCopyright 2009 Anthony E. Larson

In my quest to popularize the advancing science of comparative mythol-

ogy and plasma physics as they relate to the Restored Gospel, it occurred

to me that the popular for Dummies series, relating to everything from

auto repair to brain surgery, might be helpful. A nuts-and-bolts approach

to prophetic interpretation that employed an analogy about learning to

read might help others better understand my approach. The following is

the result. A.E.L.

While were denitely not dum-mies, we all previously thoughtthat one needed a prophetic calling ora PhD in order to interpret prophecy.

But I have ound that not to be

the case. Anyone who has learned

to read

dummies like me andyou can also learn to under-stand prophecy.

Tis is done by simply ollowingthe clues throughout history, like Hansel and Gretel ollowed thebreadcrumb trail through the orest, tracing the images or metaphors

o prophecy to their source in Earths ancient heavens. Ten, movingorward in time rom antiquity to the present, one can map out their

use as the prophets consistently employed them in various epochs

and in a variety o cultures.

So, reading prophecy is not all that dicult. Its learning how to

understand it thats a bit hard. Tats because weve never been properly


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schooled in prophetic imagery, a skill once known to all the prophets

that has been lost to us over the eons.

And even though Joseph Smith clearly learned that skill, prop-

erly employed it and sought to reinstate its imagery in the minds oLatter-day Saints as part o the Restoration, the membership ailed to

grasp his meaning. (See Te Keys o Prophecy, #1-#12 and What

Joseph Knew.)

Yes, reading the imagery o prophecy is an acquired skill, just like

riding a bike or reading. In act, the best analogy or learning to read

prophecy comes rom your own experience as you rst began to read.

Tink back to when you couldnt read, beore you learned yourABCs. Do you recall what the printed letters on a page looked like? Ican. It looked like so much meaningless gobbledygook. Tere was no

way you or I could make sense o it no matter how long we stared at it.

Flipping the pages was utile. rying to nd meaning in it was pointless.

Well, that pretty much describes the situation where prophecy is

concerned. You can understand the words, but the message is strange

gibberish. ry as you might to nd meaning in it or make sense oit, you cannot. Instead, your head begins to hurt. Reading various

prophecies only urther complicates the matter. It all seems to deal in

that same bizarre imagery. Even reading books on the subject by sup-posed authorities on prophecy leaves you no closer to understanding

the stu. nd there are whole chunks o prophecy that the experts

all seem to avoid. Soon you despair, thinking that making sense o

prophecy is going to be nearly impossible.o teach you how to read, the teacher rst started with the alphabet

and letter recognition. Each letter had a name was aee, wasbee, and so on. And you learned to recognize them and identiy them

by name. Once you mastered the alphabet, you took your rst step

toward reading. ut you still could not read.

Te same is true o prophecy. o understand it, your teacher must

take you back to the basics stars, planets and plasmas. Why stars,

planets and plasmas? Well, thats where the language o prophecycame rom. Earths ancient heavens were once alive with planets

(the ancients called them stars, not planets) and electried, glowing,

lielike plasma phenomenon. Tese impressive elements riveted the


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attention o ancient peoples the world over and sparked an explosion

o imagination and imagery in all cultures.

Just like the letters o the alphabet, what the ancients saw in those

long ago skies became the building blocks o all religious traditionand culture.

As analyzed elsewhere (See A New Heaven and a New Earth, TeSaturn Myths and the Restored Gospel, Te Saturn Epic: In Te Be-ginning, Te Saturn Epic: Mythmaking, Te Polar Conguration

and Joseph Smith, Prophets and Plasmas and Te Electric Uni-

verse), with a little efort youll discover the reasons or believing that

Earths ancient skies were vastly dierent than our own today. Youlllearn o the objects and images our ancestors saw in the astronomicaltheater, and well give names to those planets and plasmas. Tis will

be the prophetic equivalent o learning your ABCs.

Te next thing our reading teacher did was to show us that each

letter had one or more sounds. Tat urther complicated things, but

we were told that it would all become clear i we just persevered. So,

we went down the now amiliar alphabet assigning sounds to each othem. We learned, or example, that the letter could have an sss

sound as in see, or a kay sound as in cat. Tis was urther com-

plication and conusion or our struggling young minds.

Unlike today, where planets are little more than bright, distantstars in the sky, these planets and plasmas were very close.Tey were

overwhelming and imposing because they were close to the Earth.

Tey actually appeared larger than the moon does today. Brilliantly lit,dynamic and magnicent in ancient skies, these planets and plasmas

were reverenced as gods or primeval powers.

nd ancient onlookers assigned distinctive characteristics or per-

sonalities to these nearby planets and plasmas, based on their appear-

ance, movements and changes. Tey were considered gods, supernatu-ral powers that ruled the heavens, their sole habitat. Te theater o

the gods, then, was the ancient rmament overhead. In the cultures

o antiquity, these planets and plasmas became human-like or animal-

like gods who acted out their epoch stories on that grandiose stage.

Teir identities included names, though those names varied rom

culture to culture. Even within a single culture, the same astral object


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acquired numerous names as it moved and changed over time. o

modern eyes, this riotous nomenclature o ancient gods oers only

conusion. o the ancients it made perect sense since each name

identied a unique aspect o their planet or plasma gods.But the identities and attributes o those gods were strikingly simi-

lar in every cultural tradition because the look and behavior o thoseplanets and plasmas was consistently interpreted the same way rom

culture to culture. Tis was due to the act that the appearance and

actions o these gods or powers suggested the same characteristics,

natures or personalities in the minds o the ancients the world over.

For this reason, the ancients wrote and spoke o them as i they wereliving beings or creatures, and they so illustrated them in their sacred

art. For example, Saturn (the largest o the planets seen in earthly

skies) was the ather god or creator, Venus came to be seen as the

original queen o heaven or mother goddess and Mars became her

son, the hero and the warrior, among many other designations.

nd the plasmas that were seen stretching between the planets took

on a large number o identities: a connecting sky pillar, celestial tree,world mountain, astral river and ladder, stairway or path to heaven.

Such commonalities allow us to identiy each o the primary actors

by their role in Earths ancient heavens and the traditions o mankind,no matter what name they went by in the various ancient cultures.

Returning once again to our reading analogy, we recall that our

teacher introduced the notion that stringing several letters together

produced a readable word. o read it, we used the sounds we had

learned or each letter, and we were encouraged to sound out the

more dicult words phonetically. And so we began to haltingly read

our rst words. Look, Jane. See Dick run. Run, Dick, run.

Tis was a bit o a tricky process. Sounding out each letter and thenstringing those sounds together didnt always produce a recognizable

word. We soon learned that there were more complex rules that gov-

erned the way some groups o letters sounded. Te u-g-h in laugh

or tough made an f sound, even though when those three stoodalone they said Ugh! Still more complexity to master.

Te corollary in learning to read prophecy is the realization that

prophetic interpretation assigned a number o roles or characteristics


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to each o the congregate powers in the sky. For example, Venus was

not only the mother goddess, she later became Mars crown o light,

the hand o god, the wie o Saturn and ultimately a raging, angry

goddess. One plasma conduit, stretching between Mars and Venus,was described as a dragon, beast or monster because it writhed, un-

dulated and twisted like a snake.

And the complexity o these cosmic orms only grows and multiplies

as we survey the literature and traditions o ancient cultures. Tese

original orms, prototypes or archetypes became the basis or nearly

innumerable traditional and religious narratives, and their perceived

behaviors became the stu o sacred rituals in all ancient cultures.Mastering the use o these archetypes by understanding their astral

origins allows any reader to interpret them wherever they are ound:

in religious ritual, in narratives such as scripture, in hieroglyphics,

monumental architecture, petroglyphs or sacred symbols.

In our reading analogy, we eventually discovered that words could

be grouped into sentences to complete a thought. And several sen-

tences comprised a paragraph, a tidy group o thoughts that, whengrouped together, made a summary or conveyed a concept.

In prophecy, we learn that a ew simple symbols can convey whole

narratives. In some cases, only one ideogram or hieroglyph invokes

whole paragraphs o text.

Conversely, we learn that scriptural or religious metaphors have

symbolic equivalents. Tis was a two-headed coin. On one side we

have the symbol, and on the other we have its metaphoric equivalent.Tis allowed the ancients, most o whom could neither read nor write,

to depict, read or relate a whole story with just a ew symbols or a

single ritual.

In reading, with practice came prociency. Afer years o work,we mastered reading sucient to extract meaning rom any text. We

were nally readers.

So, too, with deciphering prophecy. With some dedicated time andeort, we can train ourselves to read prophecy as easily as we readthe morning paper.

But that was not all there was to reading. We soon learned that

there were other languages. Some even used ideograms instead o an


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alphabet. Tat is, just when we think weve mastered it all, we discover

that there are new horizons to explore.

So it is with prophetic language. Once we master the basics the

archetypes

once we learn the imagery those basics gave rise to, wecan read any prophetic metaphor or arcane symbol as easily as we

read the letters on a written page.

O course when we reach that level, we discover to our amazement

that what we have learned is only the tip o the iceberg. We quickly

nd that the imagery or language o prophecy is also the key to the

vision o all the prophets, not just prophecy per se. And that includes

the teachings o the prophet Joseph Smith. We realize, too, that it isthe key to temple symbolism and ritual, both in ancient cultures and

in the modern church.

We should have guessed that learning to interpret prophecy, like

learning to read, would ultimately reveal sweeping vistas o knowledgeand understanding beyond anything we could have imagined at the

outset o our quest.

I guess were not dummies afer all.

For more essays rom this series:http://mormonprophecy.blogspot.com/

For online classes, videos, newsletters and published books exploringthis material in depth:

http://www.mormonprophecy.com/Your questions or comments are welcome:[email protected]
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Prophecy for Dummies